Female Heroes

The Hottest Female Action Stars Of All Time

For years, Hollywood has taken wrestlers, bodybuilders and sports stars and transformed them into action heroes -- albeit with varying degrees of success (for every Arnold, there’s a Shaq). So it’s a little surprising it’s taken this long for anyone to try to duplicate the formula with a female athlete, like acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh has with Haywire, which is headlined by former MMA star and American Gladiator Gina Carano.

(Interesting Side Note: To mark today's release of Haywire, and to help lower our readers' chances of getting beat up by a girl at any point in the future, AskMen and Relativity will be giving one of you an "Everlake 100 Year Kit" consisting of a punching bag, boxing gloves and a headwrap. To throw your name in the ring, sign up for our weekly newsletter; the entry link will be in tomorrow's mailout.)

Haywire’s plot is familiar enough: A black ops “super-soldier” is burned by her employers and framed for a crime she didn’t commit. With no one to trust and the subject of an international manhunt, Mallory Kane must uncover who betrayed her -- and why -- in order to clear her name. Just about every major action star has punched, kicked and shot his way through a movie like this, but it’s not just the gender-bending action and stunt work that’s making people sit up and take notice; it’s that Carano actually looks believable doing it.

But while rail-thin actresses like Zoe Saldana can make female-driven action movies an exercise in suspension of disbelief, Carano’s certainly not the first leading lady to show she’s got what it takes to hang with the guys (and then some). And with Haywire hitting theaters today, we’ve compiled a list of four more hardcore heroines who prove that action isn’t just a man’s game.